


Buy Nine Lives, Tenth One's Free

by tuesday



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aging, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Cat-Typical Violence, Cats, Character Death, Character Undeath, F/M, Gen, Ghost Cat, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 01:50:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15939293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/tuesday
Summary: Chitters the Brave (also known to his humans as Gingersnap) lived a long, glorious seventeen years protecting his humans, securing his territory, and murdering the fuck out of any small woodland creatures unfortunate enough to wander in from the great outdoors to try their luck at becoming small house creatures.  For his efforts, he was praised, glorified, and never, ever let outside.





	Buy Nine Lives, Tenth One's Free

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Paws From Beyond](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12262149) by [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/pseuds/Sath). 



> Inspired by the questions brought up by:
>
>> “Poor guy; I wonder if his owners even knew he was haunting them? I’ll come back early tomorrow with what I’ll need to capture him. Then I’ll try a ritual to send him on to the other side.”
>> 
>> “Does that mean he was unsatisfied in this life?”
>> 
>> “I don’t think there’s any way to figure out what it was, though.”  
> 
> 
> Sorry for naming your cat when you already gave him a great one, Sath, but I figured it would be a coincidence too far if his name in life had already been Catferatu. 

Chitters the Brave (also known to his humans as Gingersnap) lived a long, glorious seventeen years protecting his humans, securing his territory, and murdering the fuck out of any small woodland creatures unfortunate enough to wander in from the great outdoors to try their luck at becoming small house creatures. For his efforts, he was praised, glorified, and never, ever let outside.

"If we let you out, you'd kill all the birds, and then there'd be nothing left to entertain you," his female human told him time and again. "We put the birdfeeder in front of the window for a reason."

"And we are never trying to walk you again," the male human would say in the tone of an oft-repeated joke worn soft and thin. "We've learned there is no harnessing fluffy murder."

Chitters learned to live with it, like he learned to live with creaking joints and needing help to be lifted on the bed and other favorite spots around the house now too high to be reached. He lived with the visits to the vet's office and the difficulties of chasing prey and the indignity of letting some of the spiders live because they were just too damn high. He also lived with large, warm sunbeams that eased the aches and fingers that had become very experienced with scritching behind his ears and under his chin in just the right way and a heating pad in his cat bed that the humans would turn on for him at night. Despite the occasional inconvenience, he lived a very long, very happy life.

 

He lived, and then he didn't.

 

Chitters went to sleep as usual, taking his evening pre-nap nap in his cat bed in preparation for a group nap in the big bed with the humans, to be followed by demanding to be let down for his daily midnight terrorizing of any prey stupid enough to intrude on his territory. After everything else in the house was sufficiently cowed, he'd yowl to be let back up, take his very early morning nap, then be let back down for his four a.m. patrol, in case anyone or anything got any ideas during his brief rest. His humans were well-trained and resigned to his routine, and it took but a single, emphatic "mrr!" to wake them. It was a routine that could not be stopped, even by death.

He woke, feeling better, lighter, and for once did not feel the need to rouse his humans, instead hopping gently to the floor and landing without the usual jolt of pain. He did his rounds, checking the front door, peering under the fridge, and glowering down into the bathroom vent where he was sure an especially crafty wolf spider lived. Bolstered by his apparent good health, he licked a sooty paw, not sure when he'd gotten quite so dirty, then made his way to the living room. There was a set of cobwebs above the cabinet, and he just _knew_ that he'd be able to make that jump again. If he knocked over a few items placed on the very top where his humans thought they could be safely stored, well, that was their fault for not factoring in the potential for a miraculous recovery. They couldn't be that important, not compared to finally taking his revenge. 

Somehow, he missed the spider the first, second, through to the seventh time he attacked. Finally, suspiciously, he slowly lowered his paw over the small spider, hanging unbothered in its web. Like a sudden return of the tricky, treacherous red dot, his paw passed through.

 

Tail lashing, thwarted and unhappy despite the joy in being able to return to all his favorite perches once more, Chitters returned to the bedroom. The lights were on. His humans were already up, as was only appropriate. He was awake, after all.

The female human was standing hunched over the foot of the larger bed, where his cat bed nestled snugly on the comforter. Her shoulders were shaking, but she was silent. The male human had an arm around wrapped around her shoulders. He was making soft, soothing shushing sounds, as he did sometimes when Chitters or the other human was particularly upset. The vocalizations were strangely uneven.

"Prt!" Chitters said. He was here, it was time to pet him!

The humans ignored him.

"Prt!" Chitters tried again. He was here. _It was time to pet him._

The female human let out a choked sob.

Determined to get to the bottom of this, to find whatever was upsetting his humans and stealing away all the attention that rightfully belonged to him, Chitters jumped up on the bed.

 

 

Oh.

 

 

That wasn't another cat on his bed.

 

 

_Oh_.

 

 

Chitters tried purring his comfort, but his humans couldn't hear him anymore.

 

Chitters had lived for seventeen (long, glorious) years. He had his routines. He knew how things worked, even if they slowly changed in minor and major ways as he grew older and more constrained by his aging body's new limitations. It had been a gradual process, like how the best wet food slowly morphed from mushy delight into crunchy dubiousness over the course of a day. This, now, being a shocking soot gray that contrasted starkly and vividly with the bright ginger of his old, curled up body—there was nothing slow or gradual about this.

His hips no longer ached. His fur would not behave, his form misting strangely in his distress. His humans could neither see nor hear him, and he couldn't even protect his home or relieve stress by engaging in some wanton and gratuitous murder. It was strange. It was all very strange.

He didn't like it. He didn't like it at all.

 

He didn't like it, but he did grow used to it. It helped that he could still interact with most objects and knock to the floor the ones most egregiously in his way. It helped that, though they couldn't see him, he could still curl up on top of the female human and purr her to sleep. It helped that he could still warm himself in sunbeams and _chirrup_ threateningly at the birds that congregated outside his window.

("Sometimes, I think I can hear, I can almost imagine—" His favorite human stopped to swallow, leaned a little harder into the male human. "It's like he's still here," she finished quietly.)

It helped especially that he discovered a whole new set of invaders, ones he had, up to this point, not realized wandered his home. Ghostly squirrels with bushy tails that trailed off into smokey air, house centipedes with missing antennae and an overabundance of legs, pill bugs curled defensively in the corners they'd died in—Chitters had murdered any number of creatures in his day, and his past haunted him. Literally.

It was the best thing that had happened to him since he died.

("I know what you mean," the male human said. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think—well. I could've sworn I heard that happy little chirp he'd give right when he found something he knew we weren't close enough to rescue.")

They were already dead, but that didn't mean Chitters couldn't re-kill them. Tip of his tail twitching, wiggling his butt to check his balance, Chitters pounced.

**Author's Note:**

> The plan had been to go through the couple moving away, the new ~~intruder~~ homeowner moving in, and Chitters' new (un)life as Catferatu, but I made myself too sad and cut a lot of it for an earlier ending where his (un)life is looking up, but he's still with his original owners. (Let's be real, no one wants to read a ghost cat's distress over being abandoned. I didn't want to re-read it for editing.) My first thoughts on where I was going were more along the lines of lolzy ghost cat adventures. Things, uh, did not go according to plan. In another universe, I finished the "colony of spiders fails at tindr before meeting that colony of insects" fic instead. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you, Sath, for all the delightful fic. There were so many to choose from, and (other than making myself sad) I had a fabulous time. 10/10 would remix again. I hope you have half as much fun writing your stories as I've had reading them. Expect a bunch of Original Works kudos once Remix Revival is over. :D


End file.
